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Wander East River Water Ferry, October 16, 2018

This year saw the re-emergence of water transportation on the East River linking Manhattan to Brooklyn and Queens.

We thought it would be interesting to retrace the history of water ferries by picking one of the more vibrant destinations known as Brooklyn’s DUMBO for Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

To start out, we will take the train leaving Darien at 8:35 a.m. and Noroton at 8:38 a.m. and gather at the Grand Central Station Information Booth on the upper level.

From there, we will take the Lexington Avenue subway to 34th St. and walk east to the 34th St. ferry terminal to purchase tickets for the East River route, boarding either the 10 a.m. or 10:40 a.m. ferry to DUMBO.

We will then proceed to the Fulton ferry landing and go to the Brooklyn Historical Society Museum to watch an eight-minute film on the history of the area. Our wandering will include a beverage stop and later lunch at the Sugarcane raw bar.

For the return trip, there are ferries at 2:29 p.m. and 2:59 p.m. going back to the 34th St. ferry terminal, where we will retrace our steps to Grand Central in time for the 4:08 p.m. or 4:33 p.m. train home.

Contact: Mark Shakley, cell 203.945.9624, mshakley@aol.com

Holiday Light Prep, Thursday, Nov 1, 2018, 9AM

Thursday November 9th we will be check the lights on the holiday wreaths. We will be meet at 9 AM behind the town hall. Last year we replaced about 195 lights and hope to pass 200 this year. The whole project takes about an hour and a half (the more people who show up the faster the work).

We will have a signup sheet at the Wednesday meetings but all are welcome to attend. They even provide free coffee and donuts.

Good community project and a good time.

Any questions see Jack Fitzgibbons at jpfitz@earthlink.net

 

We fixed the holiday lights for Darien,
Wreaths from boxes we were a carry’en.
Replacing bulbs, fixing bows, blowing fuses
We did our job with no excuses.

So remember well the seven elves of DMA,
Working in the cold that November day,
We ask no praise, we did our task
But next year we might bring a flask!

Goodspeed Opera House, Nov 15, 2018

Leave by 10:00
Lunch at 12:00
Show at 2:00
Home by 6:30.

In this hilarious valentine to show tunes and show people, a forgotten Jazz Age musical comes to life in the living room of a diehard theatre fan. As he eagerly spins his favorite cast album, a fizzy vintage show suddenly appears, exploding with song, dance and pure entertainment. Our quirky narrator fills the plot holes, with laugh-out-loud results. Packed with show-stopping numbers and larger-than-life characters, here’s a Tony Award-winning spoof that will have everyone falling in love with zany musical comedy!

Saksena, Sunil

Sunil was born in Lucknow, India in 1944. He graduated high school from La Martiniere College, Lucknow ( Google that) and received a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.

He worked at Union Carbide India before proceeding to University of California at Berkeley for graduate work. He received both a Masters Degree in Engineering as well as an MBA from Berkeley. He worked as a Mechanical Engineer at American Can Company in San Francisco where his claim to fame is he designed the machine that puts the can cover on the beer can making it safe for you beer drinkers to imbibe. For the majority of his career he was in finance: first, as an international banker with Bankers Trust Company serving in Mumbai, Singapore and New York and then, as an investment advisor with Fidelity Investments from which he retired in 2004.

He and his wife, Deepika have lived in Darien since 1985. They have two sons, one a doctor and the the other a lawyer.

Close, Bill

Bill Close was born in Washington, D.C. in 1931 and grew up in Summit, NJ where he graduated from Summit High School in 1949.   He was captain of the soccer team and ran the high hurdles for the track team. At Princeton, he was Batallion Commander of the NROTC unit his senior year and went on to serve three years in the Navy from 1953-1956 as a deck officer in the USS Warrington, a destroyer based in Newport, RI.  After his naval service he went to Harvard for an MBA and then on to Wall Street with first, Smith Barney and then, in 1962, with E.F. Hutton as a floor partner on the New York Stock Exchange. There he traded for Hutton until 1988 when he changed to a sole proprietorship. Retiring from the Exchange in 1994 he has continued to live in Rowayton and Norwalk up to the present.

Sailing and skiing were the main activities for many years with Bermuda Races and Ski Club trips all a part of the mix along with a fair amount of world travel. He has three sons and a daughter as well as a stepson and stepdaughter. He and his wife, Stephanie have been married for 27 years. They have 12 grandchildren.

He is a member of the New York Yacht Club, the Cruising Club of America and the Sachem’s Head Yacht Club, as well the as the United Church of Rowayton and the Darien Men’s Association.

Life Is Full!!!!!!

Cavanagh, Lawrence

Lawrence Dunbar Cavanagh Jr. was born in Norwalk in 1942. He graduated from Portsmouth Abbey School and then attended the Georgetown School of Foreign Service (when Bill Clinton was there). After serving in the merchant marine and the U.S. Navy, Lawrence earned a BS and MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business. From 1973 to 1976, he was with the New York Fed (in economic research). After that, he was a writer and editor at Business International (in a job later held by Barack Obama). Lawrence’s next employment was at European American Bank, where he created and ran their currency forecasting service. Later, he worked for the Chicago Board Options Exchange in a truly transformative position as liaison between the Exchange and major trading desks. From 1991 until retirement in 2011, Lawrence worked for Value Line Inc., where he re-modeled, redesigned, and ran Value Line Options, an online subscription service (available at the Darien Library). He met his wife, Eleanor Reimer, in 1972, when she was working on her PhD in Medieval History. They live in Rowayton. Lawrence is a member of the Saugatuck Shore Club, a board member of the Norwalk Symphony, and president of a 97-yer-old charity foundation.

Sponsored by Jim Frayer.

Bill Nightingale

William Joslyn Nightingale, 89, known as Bill, passed away after a brave battle with cancer on September 20, 2018. He will be remembered for his positive attitude and unshakeable integrity.

Bill was born on September 16, 1929 in Minneapolis, MN to Willam Isaac Nightingale and Gladys Joslyn Nightingale. He married Carla Carroll of Wayzata, MN in 1957 and in 1966 moved his family to Darien, CT, where he lived for almost 30 years. In 1993, Bill married Deborah Watson and lived in Rowayton, CT before recently relocating to New Canaan.

Bill graduated from Bowdoin College in 1951 and from the Harvard Business School in 1953. He served as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Supply Corps in Port Lyautey, French Morocco from 1954 – 1956.

Bill began his career at General Mills in Minneapolis. After he moved to the New York area, he worked in senior management positions at Booz, Allen and Hamilton, Hanes Corporation, and The Bali Company of New York, NY, where he was President and CEO.

In 1975 he founded Nightingale and Associates LLC, one of the first crisis management and turn-around consulting firms in the U.S. After a long successful run at the helm, he retired in 1995.

After retirement, Bill served on many corporate and charitable boards. He was particularly proud of his service as president of Person to Person.

Bill was a long-standing member of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Darien, where he was on the vestry and was senior warden. He was an active member of The Harvard Club, Wee Burn Country Club, and Noroton Yacht Club.

Throughout his life, Bill had many friends. A generous optimist, his glass was always half full. He loved his home in Bridgewater, VT, the Maine coast, skiing and traveling. He was a role model to many and imparted advice with wisdom and humor.

Bill is survived by his wife Deborah of New Canaan; his son Paul Nightingale, and wife, Kate, of Marblehead, MA; daughter Sara Nightingale of Sag Harbor, NY; son William J. Nightingale Jr., and wife, Julie, of Rowayton, CT; and daughter Margot Nightingale, and husband, Henry Personnaz, of Paris, France. He is also survived by his nine grandchildren, his brother Donald Nightingale, and wife, Gerda, of North Oaks, MN, and step-children Ian and Sarah Watson. He was pre-deceased by sister Nancy Jones.

A memorial service celebrating Bill’s life will be held at 11:00 am Thursday, October 4, at St. Luke’s Church, Post Road, Darien, CT.

In lieu of flowers, please send donations in Bill’s memory to Bowdoin College or Person to Person in Darien, CT.

Book Club: Bad Blood : Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup John Carreyrou, Jan 9, 2019

The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos–the Enron of Silicon Valley–by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face of pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers. In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in an early fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: the technology didn’t work. For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at the Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company’s value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors. Here is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a disturbing cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley

Book Club:The Spy and the Traitor : the Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben Macintyre, Dec 12, 2018

Oleg Gordievsky was a spy like no other. The product of a KGB family and the best Soviet institutions, the savvy Russian eventually saw the lies and terrors of the regime for what they were, a realization that turned him irretrievably toward the West. His career eventually brought him to the highest post in the KGB’s London station-but throughout that time he was secretly working for MI6, the British intelligence service”-

Thompson, Doug

Born 1940 in Fenton MI.  Awarded BS in Chemical Engineering from Michigan State University 1962.  Started career in General Electric’s Manufacturing Management Training Program 1965.  Went on to International Sales &  Marketing at Shipley Co in Newton, MA.

Elected to American Society of Electroplated Plastics trade association President & Hall of Fame. Published multiple technical articles including: Society Automotive Engineers, Interference Control, Products Finishing, Society of Plastics Engineering.

Now is in Real Estate Rental Properties Investment/Management
He’s a Duplicate Bridge certified teacher & director. Rank: Gold Life Master
Resides in Rowayton CT with Bridge Partner & Life Partner Karen Barrett
Son Aaron resides in Maynard, MA with Grand Son Bodie who saved the life on man drowning on Walden Pond July 2018.

Sweeney, Ed

Edwin J. Sweeney was born in Weymouth, Mass., in 1949 and grew up in Hingham, Mass. He graduated from Archbishop Williams High School in Braintree, Mass., in 1967 and was active on the hockey team for four years. He graduated from St. Anselms College in Manchester, N.H., with a B.A. and the University of Notre Dame with a B.S. in civil engineering in 1972. At Notre Dame, he participated in varsity sailing. He received an M.S. in civil engineering in 1974 from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is a registered professional engineer in Connecticut and California. His working career started as a consulting engineer for Carollo Engineers in Walnut Creek, Calif., in 1974. He joined Dorr Oliver in 1977 as a sales engineer for industrial filtration products and in 1989 became vice president of sales for water and wastewater filtration systems for Dorr Oliver Environmental Systems. In 1989, he joined Krauss Maffei Corp (Munich & Rowayton) as sales manager of industrial filtration and in 2007 was with Flottweg Separation Technology (Munich & Rowayton) as industry manager of filtration systems for petro chemical and mineral processing. Ed and his wife Vivian of 39 years live in New Canaan and have two sons, one living in Darien and the other in London. Ed is a past commodore of Noroton Yacht Club, past president of the Darien Winter Club, member of Silvermine Golf Club, New Canaan Men’s Club and former member of the Darien Environmental Protection Commission. For hobbies, Ed is an active competitive sailor, likes golfing and is an avid Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots and Notre Dame fan.

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